Video thought to be of missing family is inconclusive

Fallbrook man, wife, sons last heard from on Feb. 4

Nearly two months after a Fallbrook family of four vanished with scarcely a trace, authorities continue to pursue leads in Mexico, while some relatives are skeptical as to whether they ever crossed the border in the first place.

A grainy Border Patrol video taken the evening of Feb. 8 shows two adults and two young children crossing on foot into Mexico at San Ysidro, and investigators think they could be missing businessman Joseph McStay, his wife and their two young sons. The video has been enhanced for resolution by San Diego County Sheriff’s Department investigators, but it has yielded no better identification on the foursome than the original.

“Some family members are more certain that it is them than others,” said Lt. Dennis Brugos of the sheriff’s homicide unit, which has been working with Mexican authorities in hopes of finding the McStays.

McStay, 40, his wife Summer, 43, and their children Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, were last heard from Feb. 4. Since then, there has been no activity on their cell phones, said Mike McStay, 37. He said his missing brother, who ran a custom indoor fountain business, was a frequent cell phone user who was on track to rack up 7,000 minutes that month.

Mike McStay, who lives in Orange County, said he isn’t convinced that the people in the video are the missing family.

“I have analyzed that thing hundreds of times, I don’t know,” McStay said of the video, which authorities are hoping to enhance further. “The best I can come up with is that the children are the appropriate age and the appropriate size. The quality of the video is just very, very poor.”

He said the last time his brother traveled to Mexico was in 2003, and that he is the only member of the family who holds a passport; his wife’s passport is expired, McStay said. In addition, their youngest child’s birth certificate, required for minors to cross back into the United States, is with the child’s grandmother.

John Cirignani, who with his wife is a longtime friend of Summer McStay’s from Orange County, said in a recent interview that Summer McStay had expressed unease with the idea of traveling to Mexico even as a possible vacation destination, saying she had concerns about safety.

Since the family disappeared, local investigators have teamed with Baja California state police, which have made inquiries about the family at airports, bus stations, hotels, shopping centers, hospitals, even the Tijuana morgue. Investigators checked in Los Cabos with a family acquaintance, who had not heard from them, according to Baja state police.

In the United States, investigators from the state Department of Justice also are involved, Brugos said.

While there is still an investigation north of the border, “it seems as though there is a high probability that they went south,” Brugos said. “We are going to look in that direction now.”

Mike McStay fears something happened to the family in the four days between when they were last heard from and the night their SUV was found near the border — the same night the video shows the two adults and two children walking south.